The ideal is to fall in love, have children and live happily ever after, but I don't believe in that. It's never happened to me, has it? I've learnt that I've got to make my own ideals. I need to fall in love with me and then see what happens with the rest of the world. I'm my number-one priority. I have fallen in love with me a little bit... this is going to sound so narcissistic but I love it that I'm swimming again. I like my figure a lot more now.

If you don't like me, leave me alone. I get completely slagged off by people whose mortgage I'm paying. They write 500 words about me, they pay their mortgage that week. Someone on The Independent called me a 'retard' which really wound me up. I responded. I'm not saying how, but I totally responded.

Money can't buy you love, but it can buy you an around-the-world air ticket whenever you want. Splitting up with Mat [Collishaw] was incredibly heart breaking, but you have to deal with it. Tough shit. I went to Australia for a few months.

My work is changing - I'm going to design swimming pools that will change the face of London. They'll be these white egg-shaped lidos with retractable roofs. At night they'll be lit up and when you're going over on a plane the hostess will say: 'If you look to your right you'll see a Tracey Emin pool.'

I stopped drinking spirits in 1999. I can still get drunk and have a really good time on a bottle-and-a-half of good white wine. If you drink a bottle of brandy you turn into a monster and one day you'll wake up with no kidneys and cirrhosis of the liver. I don't drink coffee either, it had the same effect on me that 10 lines would have on someone else. I've never taken drugs.

Just because someone isn't in love with you any more doesn't mean you have to hate their guts. In the last 10 years I've had two really good boyfriends. Mat and Carl Freedman. Carl is one of my best friends... we forget that we were ever together, the idea of it now seems... pervy! People that don't know say, 'You and Carl get on so well, why don't you get married or something?' And I say, 'Why don't you fuck your brother?' It would be just like that. And with Mat it was just so passionate and gorgeous and brilliant. We had six years together, it would be a complete waste of time if you didn't salvage friendship out of it. I feel like I've triumphed. Instead of losing two really good men I've got two really good mates.

When I was drinking a lot my friends used to say to me: 'You and your bodily fluids, Tracey.' I was either vomiting, shitting or bleeding.

I won't sleep with stupid people. When I have sex I like to have my brains fucked out; I'm not having anyone touching my brain who isn't my equal. You have to be equals otherwise it's going to be a mess.

I'm incredibly clean. It's just sometimes these things happen. Once I didn't go home all night, I was outside - al fresco - and suddenly I realised I was supposed to be at the dentist. I think I was probably still drunk when I turned up. I walked in and the dentist said, 'Before we do anything, Tracey, I think you should clean your teeth.' And I went and looked in the mirror and I had sperm all round my chin.

The best thing I ever did was have my abortions. If I die lonely in a hotel room sobbing my heart out, I will never ever regret not having those children.

Last time I felt suicidal was when I came back from Australia. It's the first time I've felt like that in a long, long time. It was about everything. My cleaner hadn't cleaned my house for eight weeks so when I came home there was a residue of death in my house. Also, I'd come from Australia which was all sunny and light back to a home that I'd been sharing with Mat, but wasn't any more. And I had really bad jet lag. You know with jet lag you wait for your soul to catch you up? Well, I had to wait a really long time for mine to come from Australia. I sat on the stairs crying and I just thought, 'I really want to die.'

I regret letting people treat me like shit when I was younger. Particularly men. It won't happen again.

· Tracey Emin's work will be included in 'Inspiration: the energy behind art', an auction in aid of the Terrence Higgins Trust being held at Fresh Art, at the Business Design Centre, Islington on 17 July. Fresh Art runs from 18-20 July (08701 261783).